Gary Williams
College of Letters, Arts & Social Sciences
Department of English
Professor and Department Chair
Home Town:
Billings, Montana
Campus Locations: Moscow
With UI Since 1973
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Ph.D., Cornell University (Ithaca, NY), 1973, English (concentration in American literature and intellectual history)
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M.A., Cornell University (Ithaca, NY), 1972, English
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A.B., Washington University (St. Louis), 1969, English
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19th century American literature
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Transatlantic literary currents
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20th/21st century fiction
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Intersections between the humanities and the sciences.
Gary Williams grew up in Billings, Montana, in a working-class family. His research focuses on early nineteenth-century American literature, with particular attention to women writers and European influences on American writing. He has been a member of the English department at the University of Idaho since 1973.
He was chair of the department first from 1986 to 1996 and an inaugural College of Letters and Science Humanities Fellow in 1998-99. In 2007-08 he was selected as the university's first Distinguished Humanities Professor.
- The Literary Emergence of Julia Ward Howe (University of Massachusetts Press, 1999)
- The Hermaphrodite by Julia Ward Howe (edition with introduction, University of Nebraska Press, 2004)
- Philosophies of Sex: New Essays on The Hermaphrodite (edited with Renee Bergland). Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2012.
- “What Margaret Thought of George,” forthcoming in Exaltadas: A Female Genealogy of Transcendentalism, eds. Jana Argersinger and Phyllis Cole (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2012). (Part of a larger study of George Sand’s impact on 19th-century American intellectuals.)
- Distinguished Humanities Professor, 2007-08
- University of Idaho Award for Excellence in Teaching, 2001
- Sigma Tau Delta Outstanding Teacher of the Year Award, 1999
- Alumni Awards for Excellence in Teaching, 1986, 1988, 1997, 2000, 2004, 200, 201, 2012
- ASUI Outstanding Faculty Award, 1980
